Network Representatives:

The Politics Network invites scholarship that deals with political history, institutions, organization, and mobilization, as well as the politics of policy-making and political processes across time and place. We are broadly concerned with politics' intersections with other social entities, including the state, the economy, culture and knowledge production, welfare state institutions, social citizenship, and education. Past conferences have featured scholarship on political dynamics within and across social (race, ethnicity, gender, etc.) and political (left-right, conservative-liberal, etc.) categories, and on local, urban/suburban, rural, regional, national and international levels. Sessions often have a comparative and/or historical emphasis, and frequently overlap with the following networks: States and Society; Culture; Macro-Historical Dynamics; Migration/Immigration; Race and Ethnicity; Women, Gender, and Sexuality; Urban; Economics; Labor; and Criminal Justice/Law.

We encourage submissions from all disciplines, including history, sociology, philosophy, anthropology, economics, political science, communications studies, gender studies, ethnic studies, geography and demography.  We encourage complete panel proposals (including book sessions), but will also consider individual papers.

The submission deadline is March 1, 2012. Consistent with the 2012 conference theme of "Histories of Capitalism," we are especially interested in works with an emphasis on the intersection of politics and capitalism.  We are also interested in works on the following more specific topics:

• the politics of money, banking, finance, and financial regulation.  Given the conference theme, we are especially interested in papers and sessions dealing with crises of capitalism in general and financial crisis in particular
• politics and technology, knowledge and expertise
• politics and religion
• grassroots movements and new political forces, including nativist politics, religious and new democratic movements, the netroots, the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movements.  Papers dealing with new technologies and social media in politics are particularly welcome.
• politics in/of Europe, Latin America, China and the Middle East, including US and Canadian relations with China
• in light of the 50^th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, and ongoing tensions with Iran, papers or a session on the politics of nuclear containment or proliferation
• the politics of welfare, entitlements, social and regulatory policies--including health care, housing and pensions; gay marraige; gun control; labor and employment; etc.
• the politics of economic, monetary and fiscal policy
• the politics of education and educational finance, particularly higher education.  Specifically, the program committee invites works on state funding decisions, calls for privatization of public institutions or separating flagship institutions from state systems, and plans to measure faculty “productivity” in terms of research funding and course enrollments.
• topics dealing with any of the above that make specific reference to Canada, employ US-Canada comparisons, or pertain specifically to Vancouver, given that Vancouver will be the location of the 2012 SSHA meetings